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I still have a few 2013 releases to catch up with, and I though I wanted to make my Oscar nominations predictions post having seen all of them, the nods are due early tomorrow morning so I’ll have to post them now.

I remember when I first decided to start a blog to review films I vowed I’d try to see as many films from any given year I could, so that I could get a real overview of the whole year in film and not try not to skip those films which I knew were just disasters waiting to happen. I also vowed that I’d see at least one more film each year than I had seen the previous one. In 2010, my first year doing this, I saw 210 films, which I thought was a pretty good number. In 2011 I saw 256 releases from that year, upping the quota from the previous year by a whopping 46 films. That number, 256, always seemed pretty huge and I doubted I’d be able to pass it this year. Well, Les Misérables (though I’m seeing it in January) is the 256th 2012 release I’ve seen, and I still have a few more films to go, so I guess 2013 will be the real challenge.

Parental Guidance is the kind of movie that just shouldn’t really exist. During December when some of the very best films of the year are being released to vie for some awards attention we sometimes get stuff like this, family movies that are just absolutely horrible and that, like is also the case with this one, still manage to make a nice buck. Plus, no disrespect to them, but Billy Crystal and Bette Midler shouldn’t be the headliners of a movie in this decade.

By now we know the case of the West Memphis Three. We know how three teenagers were convicted and tried for the murders of three boys back in 1994, murders which were set to have been produced as part of a satanic ritual and which got one of the accused a death sentence and the other two life sentences. After having served over 18 years in prison, they were released. You’ve heard about this case as much as you have mostly because people ranging from Johnny Depp to Eddie Vedder were outspoken about their beliefs of the innocence of these three men, and because three terrific HBO documentaries have been made about them.

Finally I get to watch Zero Dark Thirty. Let me tell you something out front, I don’t intend to get into any of the hot topics that have been surrounding this movie, at least not spend the whole review talking about. I won’t talk about whether it’s pro-Obama, or whether it’s pro-torture, or whether it got improper access to classified information. On the one hand I don’t think I’m really classified to talk about those things with any kind of credibility (though, obviously, that hasn’t stopped most people with an internet connection to do so) and on the other hand I’m here to talk about the merits of Kathryn Bigelow‘s latest as a film. And as a film this is an undeniable masterpiece.

I am, like so many others, a devout member of the church of Judd Apatow. What the man has done to change the comedic landscape of our time during the last decade or so really is amazing. From having his hand in some of the most adored cult TV shows in recent memory, from The Ben Stiller Show to The Larry Sanders Show to, of course, the short-lived masterpiece that was Freaks and Geeks, to revolutionizing comedy in the mid 00’s with films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad.

Tom Cruise is staging a comeback as of late. Sure, he’s never really been away for that long, but it seems now that he’s just seriously trying to retake the title of world’s biggest action star that once so certainly belonged to him. That started, of course, with last year’s stellar Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the fourth entry in that franchise and also the best one in the series which I ranked as the 21st best film of 2011. He was then seen in the disappointing Rock of Ages this year, but that wasn’t his movie so I don’t count that towards his comeback track record.

Les Misérables is a bit too over-the-top and pompous, but it’s still seriously well-made, with a passion and energy that translates to the performances (with one critical omission) even if it doesn’t always do the same with the vocals. Read my review for it here.

Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s follow-up to The Hurt Locker is an undeniable masterpiece, a film that’s both disturbing and 100% necessary, the most vital film about post-9/11 America. Read my review for it here.